An Update on BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0

Today, RIM has posted on the Blackberry blogs an update on the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0. As most of you who follow RIM, they have been great with promises, but they fail on delivery. This announcement did not fall short on that.

Many expected a release of the new PlayBook OS, with native email clients, Android player and other features first this summer, then this fall, the PlayBook OS 2.0 is now officially been postponed till February 2012. Wow, the features that should have been delivered during the initial launch are now 10 months after.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my BlackBerry 9700 and Playbook, but I am getting tired of RIM’s promises missing the targets all the time. It stops being funny when you hear a new release and you automatically add 6-9 months at least to it.

I doubt I will leave BlackBerry for my phone any time soon, but PlayBook has been so badly bungled and remains SO overpriced for what it delivers the only way I will EVER use one is if it was given to me for free.

Two Kindle Fire on pre-order for less than cost of 1 PlayBook. And they’ll do FAR more than PlayBook probably ever will.

So it’s going into closed beta with select enterprise customers in next little while to work out the bugs, this is more then we had at the beginning of DevCon.

It’s not cool that they’re waiting until February to release to general public, but I rather not be BBX 2.0 beta tester. I am already an early adopter for the PB (which I still love). I want them to release something that works seamlessly.

I guess other people may feel differently. Maybe they think Rim should release incremental updates to get the BBX up to the full version that is slated to come out in February, and maybe that’s not such a bad idea either.

I’m disappointed we all have to wait, but personally for me I don’t actually care since I was never anxious for PIM on my PB since it is always bridged to my BB.

One more thing, are they doing anything different then what apple did with the iPad 1 and 2? iPad 2 was launched a year later with upgrades etc to addressed the issues found in iPad 1. Same with iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S…

So 10 months later we get an upgraded OS, we at least don’t need to upgrade our hardware as well…

Agreed! RIM, RIM what are you doing! Don’t you realize your hurting the brand and providing ammunition for your enemies everytime you do this. I think the delay is due in part to the Android player not being quite ready – still getting developers on board. Please don’t make announcements, until you are about a month away from releasing it.

Playbook is officially done. They cannot get momentum after missing the holiday season and they just burned all of the existing PB owners quite badly…. Odds are they won’t make the Feb release date either.

RIM has definitely killed the playbook.
It’s a total fail, they would like to be the best IPad alternative and they just have released the best touchpad successor…
(a French customer very very very disappointing!)

I would care but I switch to iOS about 6 months ago for phone and tablet (BTW iOS 5 is really awesome). If RIM actually comes out with something better I would be willing to switch as I don’t feel any ill will towards them. Only feel a great deal of sadness for the gross mismanagement their executive management is responsible for.

I’m having a hard time trying to find anything nice to say…kindest words would be extremely disappointing and frustrating but really, it’s unacceptable and inexcusable. If 2010 was bad, 2011 has been abysmal for RIM. I honestly can’t recall the last time they made a deadline, deadlines that come straight out of their mouths (it wasn’t the media that said “60 days”, the CEO). They couldn’t get the playbook out until after the holidays last year…fail. And when they did ship it, it had no native apps among other things…fail. Then they infamously said “60 days” and actually it might be 60 months before we see native apps. Now OS2.0 is delayed until February which I guess is still an upgrade since they go from no product on the shelves during the holidays to a POS product this holiday season…and quite frankly, I read the press release and was unimpressed. In fact, I don’t think I saw the word “consumer” in there once which in and of itself, says something. Needless to say, I think their entire PR and marketing departments should be completely overhauled and I’m about 1 more failed deadline from changing my shareholder vote that the co-ceo arrangement needs to go. In fact, with this announcement, I think you’ll start hearing calls for both to be removed. From what I hear Alec Saunders is getting good reviews, Dan Dodge?…the ship needs to be rocked.

I actually started laughing the moment I read that press release. Not funny laugh, but the hysterical sad type. Honestly I don’t care about OS 2 (BBX), I don’t care about android player. I didn’t buy an android tablet did I? What I care about is, RIM should have released a native email app and calender app with the playbook (forget about BBM for the moment). This is your bread and butter, these are basic apps that should come with any “professional grade” tablet. That is how professionals organize their lifes and communicate quickly. Failing that they should have allowed third parties to develop it. I remember an email app that was released by a third party developer right after the playbook came out and it was never approved by RIM. I am almost certain that calender apps have received similar treatment. And now you say, we can’t have any of these basics till you release OS 2? REALLY???? WTF???

I think what everyone is missing on this announcement is this: With PB OS 2.0 being delayed till February 2012 I have to assume that the BBX phones will be released this time next year then. That hurts bad. I was kind of holding off on getting a 9900 since the BBX phones were supposedly coming out Q1 of 2012 but with this announcement that has been pushed back to at least Q3 2012 in my mind. Very disheartening.

It is unfortunate that RIM has pushed back OS2. They need to get it right and they need to get it delivered before the end of February. If they miss the mark this time, I think they will have fallen so far behind that the QNX phones may not make much of a difference. If they can get developers on board and if they can release on time, they might just stand a chance against Windows Phone 8 as the number 3 phone OS.

RIMM’s big mistake was to take off the incremental updates, in favor a huge update, thus building expectations for an upgrade they clearly were not ready to do. The smart thing for RIMM to do is go back to doing incremental updates (with priority on PIMM native apps) and get the marketing machine going for the holiday season sales.